Posts for Tag:
revelations

So here's the deal: I had planned to purchase a honeycomb-based tablet as my sabbatical leave of absence going away present to myself. I was carefully considering all the pros and cons of both the Motorola Xoom and the new 10" Samsung Galaxy Tab.

Between the two of them discovered the latter has a better general body finish, as well as slightly better front camera. Besides, Samsung has had the first tab out there for some time now, which means they have some more experience in regards to what works and what doesn't, as building tablets goes.

The problem is that I just tried an ipad2 for the first time. And, besides feeling super snappy and slick, it's so shinny :). I might have fallen for this thing already.

The price is more appealing as well: 549 euro for the 32GB wifi version. I can't imagine either the galaxy or the xoom matching this anytime soon. Not before the ipad3 comes out anyway ;)

UPDATE: Alright, i sold my soul to the devil: Ordered an iPad2, arriving at the end of the month :)

Recently i had to fill one of those client/customer satisfaction surveys. Endless pages of "how well do you grade feature X" questions that frustrate you beyond the point of killing yourself and your colleagues.

And that got me thinking: how about a simple form that asks "Are you happy? Yes/No"? If you answer "yes", case closed. And some people are just plainly happy with the service/product/job so this is definitely a time saver. If you answer "no", you are presented with a text field where you can start typing what you are not happy about and, as you do, it queries for responses from other people to suggest you with stuff that might be a problem to you. If you find one that applies to what you are trying to complain about, you choose it and another text field presents itself to complain about something else. If you don't find one previous reply, yours is added. Repeat until done.

How's that for simplicity?

And while we're are it, why not make it an online survey service and make tons of cash?

Ok, this is so freaking hilarious that i cannot help it but sharing. It seems that, when faced with the impossibility of using their iPhones with gloves on, some Koreans have started using miniature sausages (yes, sausages) for that effect. It seems that the composition of the sausage is similar enough to a human finger for the touch screen to work.

I wonder what someone in the 80s would say if you told them that - in the future - people will use sausages as a way to interact with computers...

The other day I watched a movie entitled "the age of stupid". Long story short, it shows the point of view of someone who, around 2055, survived a human species near eradication and built a tower with all the digital records of mankind and a bunch of other stuff too, like frozen animals, art pieces, etc. Just imagine a Noah's arc on steroids - except for the fact that it's not an arc, it's a tower.

Anyways, he basically spends the entire movie preaching about our inability to be smart about the environment and supporting his words with snippets of TV news (actual footage from our times) about the environment, what oil companies are doing in developing countries, what we do with our cars and our planes, and so forth. This made me realize that I'm probably not doing enough for the environment and should start doing something about that fact.

In any case, today I just read about a new breakthrough in solar energy harnessing. Scientists made a discovery that allows a new type of solar panel to be 6x more efficient than traditional zync panels (the ones typically used today in solar power installations). It can even work underground! Can we ditch oil once we figure out how to replace plastics, now? :)